These two roads may be significantly separated by distance — they are around 20 kilometres apart — but are hardly distant from each other.
Link Road in Egmore-Anna Salai and TNHB Road in Sholinganallur are united at the hip like cojoined twins. They suffer from the same anthropogenic activity, one buttressed by an attitude that views spaces along waterways as “dispensable” and an unofficial dumping zone.
Hardly a kilometre long, Link Road is a helpful option for motorists to bypass rush-hour traffic on a section of Anna Salai. Unfortunately, the road that languidly stretches along Cooum, linking Ethiraj Salai in Egmore and Dams Road in Anna Salai, is viewed as useful in a sinister way.
It comes in handy for those who would not take responsibility for the waste they generate. On any given day, the side of Link Road that wraps around the buttress zone of Cooum would be erupting in unseemly pimples of garbage. The variety of offscourings would be staggering.
This side of the road only mirrors the squalor presented by the so-called buffer zone along the Cooum.
N Mahesan, chief engineer, solid waste management, Greater Chennai Corporation notes that it has to do with people’s unhelpful tendency to dump discards along waterways.
“Despite continual efforts to clean the space, the problem persists. We want to put an end to this scourge through a surveillance system. On both ends, we have put site restriction barriers [which restricts the use of the road by heavy vehicles to certain hours]. Despite that, unauthorised dumping happens here and there. We will tighten the system by ensuring the barriers are operated as they should be, having an effective surveillance mechanism and a hefty fine slapped on those found dumping on the road,” says Mahesan.
In terms of squalor, the space immediately next to the Cooum puts the Link Road in the shade. In fact, one of the gates to this space has been rendered unusable as it stands open and in a state of frozen shock, as mounds of garbage have been forced through it.
Asked whether coordination with PWD would help spruce up this section, the chief engineer looked upon the idea favourably.
Could that coordination — if it happens — result in the creation of a garden or a social space on both sides of the fence to check dumping?
One ready example that springs to mind is how the PWD allowed a space along the Chitlappakam lake to be used by residents as a cultural venue on Sundays.
TNHB Road
TNHB Road in Sholinganallur may not be subjected to garbage dumping of this scale, but the conditions predisposing it to a similar state are already visible.
Here too, dumping happens on the side of the road that wraps around the buffer zone of a waterway, the Buckingham Canal in this case. The offscourings are varied in size, shape and character.
TNHB Road in Sholinganallur
There is a case for creating greenery along this space to prevent its continued abuse. Greater Chennai Corporation has installed a fountain at the entrance of this road, and it would help immensely if it extended this commitment to aesthetics to the rest of the road, particularly where it abuts the B-Canal’s buffer zone.
At present, this side of the road squirms with metallic nematodes: Giant-sized pipes meant for Metrowater’s Nemmeli drinking water project .
According to sources close to the project, the pipeline-laying work has been completed on TNHB Road — only a negligibly small part of it might be pending — and these pipes are meant for work further up. The entire pipeline-laying work should be completed in six months, a source reveals.
When the pipelines leave in a clatter, GCC should hunker down to raising a greenery on this side of the road. It should be greening of the kind that would carry an in-built protection against dumping.
